Frenetic fireflies glinted behind her eyes that summer. I didn't know what had changed her, but she swung her arms freely, wore loose hemp bracelets with colored beads, drew wild birds with marker in the crooks of her elbows: I never knew till then she was ambidextrous. Electricity crackled and sparked between us like lightning kissing telephone wires in a midsummer storm. I kept hoping her straw-colored hair was wild and dry enough to light a fire in, but all summer long we smiled and laughed and smiled; she thirsted too much to drive her closed eyelids into the rain, so I indulged it all, glad, at least, for her presence.

Once, at school, I snuck up behind her during lunchtime as she stared intently into her white computer screen at an empty table beside the wall. As I reached out to poke her in the ribs my eyes glanced across text and the blinking cursor: Pond water festers in my veins and my heart has stopped trying to turn it into blood. I have been trying to forget myself before anyone else remembers me. I backtracked, stepped quietly away, but sometimes when she looks me in the eyes and asks me where the thunder's gone I wonder whether she heard me breathing behind her, then.

She vowed, one spring night under the stars, after hours clinging so hard to a boy's stomach as his motorbike screamed down a deserted Minnesota highway that the imprint of her clenched fists took three days to fade from his skin, to exist. This I learned after her death, after that summer, when the boy came up to the funeral podium holding a battered piece of paper that held only aimless sketches of her eyes and crumpled against it. After he left her, the only way she knew how to hold onto him was by expanding in her promise to live, and so she did wildly, desperately, swallowing soil and sunshine into her open throat to grow wildflowers out of each of her orifices. After that summer was over, they told her she had to let go. So she let autumn dry the auburn leaves and pressed her wildflowers between the pages of her journal, and as one by one the foliage fell, she let go.

They say that sex is more than just another way to numb the lonely nights.Until now, I believed it would never be more than thatfor someone like me.But, when I look at you, I see everythingI've spent the last five years searching forin the beds of men who neverremembered my name in the morning.Don't just fuck me like the rest of them, baby,Show me that love isn't just a word used in fairytales and chick flicks.Don't forget my name.

There are nights when I sit upwondering if things will always end this way.I’ve spent years in the beds of menwho didn’t deserve my bodyand never cared for my mindor the thoughts that ran through itas their fingers ran through my hairand I refuse to waste another daybeing treated like a falling star whenI was born to burn like the sun.I am more than a temporary fix foryour lonely days,I am more than the heart, bleedingon my sleeve.I am the clouds in a stormy skyand goddamn it, somedaythis rain will clear up and the darknessraging through me will evaporateinto the most beautiful rainbowyour sorry eyes have ever seen.Maybe someday someone will comealong who doesn’t dullthe color radiating through myveins.Maybe someday someone will comealong who knows what lovemeans.Maybe someday.

After a particularly long phone conversation with you,I find myself frustrated.(Not that that's too unusual)It feels like we're driving in circles,One of your favorite activities.Driving around the same streetsFor hours.I always hated that.It's a waste of timeAnd of gas.

I dreamt in poetry last night, I cannot remember a single word but I felt the art in my bones. Tried as I did to recall the pentameter it eluded my thoughts, fleeting shadows of metaphor and beauty. But you were there. This I know.

The image was spring mist and pastel blur, shifting heart-swells carried me aloft. I felt you rather than witnessed and that was far more tangible for the viewing. Perhaps there was not poetry as verse or couplet but movement and sensation, the enchanting poetry of your soul infused with my dreamscape. Whatever the truth of brushstrokes laid on masterpieces of desire, we were there and poetry was your sweet breath across my cheek.

I dreamt in poetry last night and awoke to find the stanzas contained no words, only you.